


Bring Her Home

by MissChioga



Series: Never Let Go [1]
Category: Four Brothers (2005)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-08
Updated: 2013-02-08
Packaged: 2017-11-28 15:46:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/676114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissChioga/pseuds/MissChioga





	Bring Her Home

In the twenty eight years that I had been alive, I had never been known as the soft kind of guy. Even with my younger brothers I was never all that soft. Sure I would protect them whenever possible, but I teased them to no end, gave them shit about things that bothered them, especially little Jackie. People knew me as the Michigan Mauler, the guy that would beat the shit out of you if you looked at me wrong. But to Evelyn Mercer, I was just Bobby - the guy that was angry at the world for the shitty life he'd gotten before he was adopted.

There had been a time when I had told Evelyn everything. I would come home from skipping school all day or playing hockey with a bad attitude and she would sit me down at the kitchen table and just listen to me. I'd never told anyone so much before or after I'd met her. She was the one woman I could talk to that, though she might not always understand, always listened to me complain.

I hadn't been back here in years, but the safe haven from my teenage years had remained the same, Ma hadn't changed a thing since I had left, and as I looked around her bedroom I really realized that she hadn't. She still had all the crap that Jerry, Angel, Jack, and I had made or bought her over the years for Christmases and birthdays were still hanging on the corners of her mirror.

The things that either couldn't be hung, or just her jewelry, were laying flat on the dresser, waiting for her to pick them up and change necklaces or whatever she was wearing. I looked down at the jewelry, seeing a couple of things that Jack had given her in his first few years of living here, and then I spotted the blue rosary.

The same rosary that I had gotten her one year for her birthday, about a year after I'd come to live with her. I picked it up, feeling the cool beads in my hands and looked. It was bright blue, a color that Ma had worn a lot, she always seemed to have something blue on every day, and I could almost tell that she wore it a lot, even after all these years, after all of the constant disappointments that I had caused her. The latest disappointment was heavy on my heart, but I knew that if she had been alive now then she would have forgiven me… she probably wouldn't have even considered it as a disappointment to her, just an accident, I'd be around the next time.

I pushed the thought out of my head and smiled down at the beads, looking up to tell Ma that I couldn't believe that she still wore this thing. But when I looked up to see if she were sitting on the bed like she normally would have been if I was in her room…she wasn't there.

Ma wouldn't be there anymore, and I think it was going to take some time to get used to. I had been gone a long time, but I was always comforted by the fact that if I did decide to come back, Ma would be there for me if I ever needed her. Now though, she would no longer be there. She wouldn't be waiting up for us in the nights that were soon to come when I decided that the time for grieving was over, and she wouldn't be there to help Jackie if I let it get to out of control.

In fact, I knew that this would get out of control, the assholes that did this weren't going to get away with their lives. And the knowledge that I might die trying to get revenge was almost comforting to me. I would be able to see Ma again anyway.

Looking back at the rosary in my hands, I sighed and laid it back down, shaking my head and quickly leaving the room behind to the bathroom.

The same bathroom where Ma had once patched up my wounds after a fight during a hockey game. Where she'd once found me sitting in as I concocted a plan to leave in case things got out of hand on the second day of living here.

I leaned on the sink, losing control then. I was going to allow myself to cry once. Only once for Ma. After that I was going to suck it up and be a fucking man. My brothers couldn't see me cry, and if I didn't allow myself this one moment then I knew that they would see it sooner or later. And if there was anyone in the world that I didn't want to see me cry, it would be Jack.

Turning on the faucet, I looked at myself in the mirror, seeing the weak look on my face, trying to control my emotions. I hadn't been known as weak since I was ten years old, and I sure as hell wasn't about to change that now. With that thought in mind, I stopped and ran my hand under the water, using it to wash the salty tears out of my eyes before taking a deep breath and then walking out of the bathroom, crossing the hallway to where the sounds of Jack's guitar was playing.

"You been crying in here ya little fairy?"


End file.
